{"id":4671,"date":"2013-08-30T14:08:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2013-08-30T14:08:12","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:08:12","slug":"blackberry-picking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christcommunitychurch.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/30\/blackberry-picking\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackberry-Picking"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know this poet—Seamus Heaney—, but his passing trends on twitter and his poems are on NPR. Plus he’s Irish, which is awesome. And this poem makes me think of a wonderful upcoming class Christ Community is offering. Details forthcoming. <\/p>\n

“Blackberry Picking” can be found in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996. Heaney, born in 1939, won the Nobel Prize in 1995. According to his Nobel biography, he grew up as a country boy on a farm in County Derry, northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

Blackberry Picking<\/strong><\/p>\n

Late August, given heavy rain and sun<\/p>\n

for a full week, the blackberries would ripen.<\/p>\n

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot<\/p>\n

among others, red, green, hard as a knot.<\/p>\n

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet<\/p>\n

like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it<\/p>\n

leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for<\/p>\n

picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger<\/p>\n

sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots<\/p>\n

where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.<\/p>\n

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills<\/p>\n

we trekked and picked until the cans were full,<\/p>\n

until the tinkling bottom had been covered<\/p>\n

with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned<\/p>\n

like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered<\/p>\n

with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.<\/p>\n

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.<\/p>\n

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,<\/p>\n

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.<\/p>\n

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush<\/p>\n

the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.<\/p>\n

I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair<\/p>\n

that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.<\/p>\n

Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

“Blackberry-Picking,” from OPENED GROUND: SELECTED POEMS 1966 -1996 by Seamus Heaney. <\/p>\n

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